Internal combustion engine designers have increasingly come to realize that substantially improved fuel supply systems are required in order to obtain higher levels of pollution abatement and increased fuel economy. Among the known options, direct fuel injection appears to be one of the best candidates for achieving improved performance but higher initial costs have tended to discourage its general adoption. This situation is accentuated by the fact that only the more sophisticated, and therefore normally the more expensive, direct injection systems are capable of achieving the increasingly higher performance goals of engine manufacturers.
Up to the present, attempts to provide a low cost fuel injection system have tended to center on distributor type fuel injection systems having a single centralized high pressure pump and a distributor valve for metering and timing fuel flow from the pump to each of a plurality of injection nozzles, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,557,765. Although simple in design concept, systems of this type generally suffer defects inherent with separation of the injector nozzles from the centralized pump. Unit injector systems avoid the inherent defects of distributor type systems by providing each engine cylinder with its own cam-actuated pump such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,544,008. Nevertheless, the performance advantage of unit injectors have generally not outweighed the detriment of greater costs except for heavy duty compression ignition engine applications.
While unit injectors have not normally been employed in low cost fuel systems, numerous refinements have been proposed over the years in an attempt to lessen their cost while retaining their inherent advantages. For example, the assignee of this application, Cummins Engine Company, Inc., has developed an open nozzle, pressure/time unit injector (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,351,288 and 3,544,008) which is characterized by the need for only a single supply line (common rail) for supplying fuel to all of the injectors. Because fuel is metered into each injector through a separate feed orifice, the time during which each feed orifice is open and the pressure within the common rail can be relied upon to control the quantity of fuel metered for injection during each injection cycle. Additional cost reductions are realized because an open nozzle unit injector does not require a pressure relief valve at the injection orifice.
While effective in providing cost reductions, certain precautions are usually required in pressure/time, open nozzle injector systems to insure that combustion gases and spurious pressure signals do not enter the fuel supply system. These precautions may include the use of a check valve, upstream from the feed orifice of the injector to discourage combustion gases (known as blow-back) from entering the fuel supply. It is also common to provide for scavenging flow of fuel through the injector to remove gases which may have entered the fuel supply line. Scavenging flow additionally serves the function of cooling the injector and would be useful even if it were unnecessary to remove blow-back gases. Thus, a commercially acceptable unit injector, even when designed in accordance with principles intended to simplify the injector structure, is typically a labyrinth of axial and radial drillings. As used in this application, "axial" means parallel with the longitudinal axis of the injector and "radial" means perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the injector. Moreover, the injector body is usually formed of multiple components requiring very close tolerance controls.
The problem of complexity is further magnified when it is desired to provide a cam operated unit injector with the capability of advancing and/or retarding fuel injection during each injector cycle. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,249,499 and 3,951,117 provide examples of pressure/time unit injectors which respond to a hydraulic variable pressure signal to control injector timing. Both of these patents disclose unit injectors in which a variable length hydraulic link is inserted into the mechanical actuating train between the engine cam shaft and the injector plunger which reciprocates to force fuel through the injector nozzle. FIGS. 16 and 17 of U.S. Pat. No. 3,951,117 specifically disclose a cam actuated, pressure/time type, open nozzle injector wherein the injector plunger is formed in two sections to create a timing chamber between them. During the metering portion of the injector cycle, fuel is metered into the timing chamber in an amount corresponding to the pressure of the fuel supplied thereto. Numerous other examples of cam actuated unit injectors employing hydraulically variable timing are known such as disclosed in U.K. Pat. No. 1,080,311 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,863,438, 3,847,510 and 3,859,973. Hydraulic timing control is also known in other types of fuel injectors such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,083,912 wherein a reciprocating piston is subjected to hydraulic pressure against the bias of a coil spring to control injector timing. In addition to purely hydraulic control, mechanical and hybrid mechanical/hydraulic variable timing controls have been applied to cam actuated unit injectors as illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,313,264 and 2,997,994. Such mechanical systems tend, however, to increase the overall size and cost of the fuel injection system to say nothing of the possibility for mechanical malfunctions. If other injector capabilities are desired, such as the capability to cut off fuel flow entirely (see U.S. Pat. No. 2,984,230), the structure of the injector will normally become still more complex.
In very simple cam actuated injectors such as illustrated in Australian Pat. No. 202,734, axial drillings have been eliminated from the injector body by forming a flow path between the exterior of the injector body and the interior of the recess in which the injector body is received. By this arrangement, an easily formed radial bore may be provided in the injector body to act as a feed passage from the supply flow path surrounding the injector body into the injector chamber of the unit injector. If the injector is capable of providing a scavenging fuel flow as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,351,288, the number of necessary flow passages increases and the overall size of the injector must increase to accommodate such passages. Multi-function injectors of this type normally require at least one or more axial passages. Such passages are more difficult and costly to form and have not been eliminated even in injector designs in which the supply and drain lines leading to and from the injector are formed entirely within the engine head such as is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,351,288.
In short, fuel injectors capable of meeting rigorous operation specifications have invariably been highly complex, costly to manufacture, and/or relatively large in size.